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Etymology data from Wiktionary via Wiktextract (CC BY-SA 4.0). Chinese character data from the 說文解字, the Taiwan MOE 國語辭典簡編本 (CC BY-ND 3.0 TW) and HSK/TOCFL lists.

Explanations are written by a local model (gemma4) and only published after a verification pass against the cited sources. How it works.

Chinese

減

/t͡ɕi̯ɛn²¹⁴/
to decrease; to subtract; to diminish
  • Ideogrammatic compound 會意
  • HSK 4
  • TOCFL 4
  • radical 水
  • 12 strokes
  • 緊
  • 紧

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Origin

Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意) and phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *krɯːmʔ, *ɡrɯːmʔ): semantic 氵 (“water”) + phonetic 咸 (OC *ɡrɯːm, “seal”) - to seal off a stream of water, decreasing its flow. 咸 is the original character of 緘 /缄 and also serves as a semantic component.

Schuessler (2007) adduces no potential cognates and leaves the origin open. That said, note strong similarities to Proto-Tibeto-Burman *s-grum (“contracted, stunted, dwarfish”), whence Burmese ကျုံ့ (kyum., “to shrink, contract”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese水 “water (Classifier: 瓶 m; 樽 c; 滴 m c; 池 m c; 盆 m c; 杯 m c)”
  • soundChinese咸 “all; completely”

Related: Proto-Tibeto-Burman *s-grum, Burmese ကျုံ့

Meanings

character
  1. to decrease; to subtract; to diminish
  2. to subtract
  3. 55th tetragram of the Taixuanjing; "diminishment" (𝌼)
  4. basic
  5. to sweep (food over to another container)
  6. to be short of

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

減：損也。从水咸聲。

Xu Shen, c. 100 CE — the first analytical dictionary of Chinese characters.

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 從整體中去掉一部分。與「加」、「增」相對。 例：減少、削減
  2. 降低、耗損。 例：減弱、減色、銳減
  3. 數學上指從一數中取去另一數。 例：五減二等於三。

© Ministry of Education, Taiwan — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW, shown unaltered.

How 減 was written 字形演變

  1. 減 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 減 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  3. 減 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  4. 減 in Regular script
    Regular
    楷書
    since c. 200 CE

Historical forms collected by the legacy etymfun dataset; most characters have several attested variants.

Sources

  • Historical glyph forms (zdic.net 字形演变) — Rights unverified
  • HSK / TOCFL word lists — Facts (levels)
  • 教育部《國語辭典簡編本》 (Taiwan MOE) — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW
  • 說文解字 Shuowen Jiezi (Xu Shen, c. 100 CE) — Public domain
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 減